Aerodynamic optimization with evolutionary algorithms

Characteristics of aerodynamic optimization are discussed through a simplified airfoil design problem. Three optimization algorithms, the gradient-based method, simulated annealing and genetic algorithm, have been applied to the airfoil shape design using the approximation concept to compare their performance. Although genetic algorithm is time-consuming, its result is superior to those of the others. Since the other algorithms will require many trials starting from various initial designs to obtain a comparable result, they will not have any advantage in efficiency. The result suggest that genetic algorithm is the best for the aerodynamic optimization. To alleviate large computational time necessary for genetic algorithm, the inverse optimization method has been developed to optimize target pressure distributions.